Desktop Modify

Desktop Modify is a little entertaining tool, and what is important, a really free one. I say 'really', as lots of developers state that their program is ‘free’ to attract users, while actually, when opening it, you are offered to pay for the tool to function properly.

This program is intended to cheer up your desktop by arranging your icons into various cute shapes. To start working with it, you need to assure that your icons are of small size and uncheck the box ‘Auto arrange icons’ and ‘Align icons to grid’ by right clicking and choosing ‘View’ menu.

There is a great choice of the shapes, and they are grouped into the following categories: Basic Shapes (among them are circles, crosses, start etc.), Christmas (snowflake, snowman, Christmas tree etc.), Nature (moon, flower, fish etc.), Objects (car, house, plane etc.) I chose Christmas tree shape, considering the fact that New Year is coming. Surprisingly enough, the program even chose the red icon to place at the top, as if it was a star. Sometimes though in order to recognize a subject depicted, it is necessary to increase or decrease the size of the shape with the help of the corresponding buttons. What is more, for some reason, some icons can be left aside and do not participate in forming a given figure.

What I would like to mention is the simplicity and the intuitiveness of the interface, as I didn't face any problems when sorting out how it all works. The software has all the necessary functions one would think of for such a program: to change the space between the icons, to fit shape to screen size, to adjust the shape position (width and height of the shape). You even have an option to make the interface transparent for you to see how the icons look depicting a given shape at your desktop. You are also offered to save the layout you like the most and give a description to it to use it later. More than that, there is even a very detailed and clear video tutorial on the developer website available.

To sum it up, Desktop Modify is a very well thought-out piece of software. There just rises a question. About its value. The matter is that a common user usually arranges the icons in a way he/she sees convenient and fast to use. Moreover, if one has many icons, a user gets used to its order at the desktop, and the change of layout will just bring discomfort.

However, the software well suits to surprise your colleague or your loved one with unusual cute figures created from the icons at their desktop while they are away. Anyway, there is a function to quickly restore the original layout, if anything.